Unholy Fury (38 page)

Late on the afternoon of 29 July, the day before Whitlam's visit to the White House, Nixon and Kissinger again reassured themselves that Watergate, ultimately, was a temporary distraction. Kissinger even regaled the president with the story of a recent dinner he had attended with journalists from the
Washington Star
. The highlight was when ‘[Carl] Bernstein from the
[Washington] Post
came in, and … said he's horrified at what he's wrought'. Bernstein was the journalist who, along with Bob Woodward, was reporting on the Watergate scandal. Kissinger deduced that most US journalists understood the ‘national obligation' not to hound the president from office. They were ‘getting second thoughts'. Nixon was only too happy to hear this kind of beltway gossip. ‘The public', he said, ‘in some way has the sense to put it all in some perspective and they think, well now, there's Watergate, there's foreign policy, and there's other things. And overall we come out pretty well. That's the reason you've got to stick it through'.
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This was the mindset of the president of the United States on the eve of 30 July 1973.

INTO THE OVAL OFFICE

Some in American officialdom, however, were clearly determined to give the Australian prime minister at least a touch of the special treatment. Although this was deemed a private visit, officials in the US State Department insisted Whitlam be allowed to land his chartered Qantas 707 jet at Andrews air force base, the presidential landing strip. Then, on arrival at the White House, a uniformed guard ushered Whitlam to the portico where he greeted the waiting, and beaming, Henry Kissinger. Some Australian journalists, still feverishly foraging for any signs of surplus American hospitality, divined the supposedly deeper meaning of these formalities. So even Kissinger's brief handshake with Whitlam for the press and an accompanying short fanfare of trumpets was, according to the
Courier-Mail
's Peter Costigan, a ‘small welcoming gesture magnified by the moment into significance'.
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But that was it. There was to be none of the caviar,
vodka or bear hugs that had been paraded before the cameras at the Nixon—Brezhnev summit. As one editorial shrewdly observed, this was a ‘working visit between two lawyers'.
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It would take some time for the Australian press to understand that the very lack of pomp and ceremony was in fact the key to the beginning of a more realistic relationship. Some, too, were clearly annoyed at their own exclusion from where the action was taking place. As Whitlam began this vital day of meetings in the centre of American political power, the press were hurriedly ushered into a waiting room, where live coverage of the Watergate hearings was being shown. There was to be no moment, where, as with the McMahon visit, the journalists were themselves feted in the Oval Office, the president personally handing out special pens with ‘Richard M Nixon' inscribed along the tip. This time, the souvenir pens were dispatched later that evening to the hotel in Washington where most of the journalists were staying. And they were delivered in a brown paper bag.
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Whitlam himself showed some early nerves. In the discussion with Kissinger that preceded his meeting with the president, the Australian leader seemed at times to have one foot firmly planted in the old customs and caricatures of alliance management. He even confessed that ‘in Australia … the new prime minister still must get his legitimacy within the first few months by gaining accolades' from the White House—a startling admission given Whitlam had expressly said he was not interested in an ‘adulatory' relationship or a ‘coronation' in Washington. Then, both Whitlam and Plimsoll, who sat in on the talks, reverted to the language of family. The prime minister talked of how ‘intimate' relations between Australia and the United States could be, and how ‘any differences in the family can be much more distressing'. Plimsoll too weighed in, suggesting that ‘sometimes problems arise because we don't really think of each other as foreigners'. It was an inauspicious start to the conversation. Kissinger, as he had reminded Wilenski in early May, told Whitlam forcefully that ‘one of the things the President objected to last December was Australia's treating the US on a par with other foreign countries'. Clearly, it was this rendering of the US as a ‘foreign' country that was seen as carrying hostile undertones. Kissinger assured Whitlam that
his win at the December 1972 elections had been expected, even though ‘we had worked with the previous government and we felt comfortable with it'. But his message to the American embassy in Canberra as regards that election had been ‘to keep hands off'. ‘Your people', Whitlam responded, ‘were perfectly correct and cordial … A few years ago we might have had some complaints'—the memories of Labor's difficulties in previous decades lingered.

Kissinger assured his guest, however, that once in the Oval Office he would ‘keep the conversation moving in various ways'. Whitlam's reply was surprising: ‘I would appreciate that', he said. ‘I'm not particularly inhibited, but I'm afraid I might freeze up with him'. It was a remarkable comment, and this account of Whitlam verging on stage fright seems surprising given his signature single-mindedness in so many other spheres of his political career, particularly on the world stage—so much so that we cannot rule out the possibility that Kissinger's recollections tell us more about his own expectations of the impending encounter than Whitlam's. The record of the conversation is a verbatim transcript, but it may very well be that the Australian leader was simply being a touch mischievous.

Kissinger again stressed Nixon's distaste for being lectured, and that there was no need for ‘softening' up the president:

 

In your meeting with the President, we are approaching this with the attitude that Australians and Americans have strong emotional bonds. This is reflected in our ties. We can't deny that we have had some strains recently—but we consider these a matter of the past … we are not looking for the slightest confrontation.

 

This stress on the primacy of ‘emotional bonds' was itself significant, and once again showed the American preference for retreating to the softer strains of cosy alliance rhetoric in years past. Asked if he had ever met Nixon, Whitlam replied: ‘Yes, twenty years ago when I was a new member of parliament. I then recognised him as a rising leader having the most brilliant of futures'.
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As is the normal custom, the press photographers were then shown into the Oval Office to take pictures of the two leaders, even as Whitlam and Nixon ‘mumbled with massive dedication to
ceremonial appearance'.
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Some journalists jotted down that the sight of the Australian prime minister sitting down with the US president had until quite recently been unthinkable. Clearly poking fun at the occasion, and the pock-marked road to its occurrence, a cartoon by Alan Moir in the
Bulletin
, entitled ‘At last—the climax', depicted both men face to face: glum, bored, irritated and seemingly impatient to simply get the meeting over and done with. The image was priceless: Whitlam yawning and reciting Latin, Nixon tapping his fingers relentlessly on the table; both leaders with head resting on their hand. ‘Ok it's nearly up', says Nixon. ‘What'll we say … Our talks resulted in a deepening of friendship and peace and international understanding …? Something like that? … Ok let's get outta here!'
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After the journalists had left, Nixon opened the discussion. His early words were conciliatory. Americans had ‘an affectionate regard for their Australian friends' and there was a ‘sound alliance'. But ‘it was a question of where we go from here. Do we muddle through or do we try to develop a concept of where we are going and how we propose to get there?' Nixon was speaking less of the alliance and more of the west in general. And he was being devil's advocate. Where the Russians and the Chinese had a ‘clear idea of where they were headed', Nixon complained of the multitude of viewpoints coming out of his own bureaucracy: most of them ‘wrong'. He was worried about a ‘malaise in liberal thinking', the view which cries ‘to hell with everything'. He was, in effect, stirring the pot, and trying to see whether the visiting Australian prime minister would take the bait.

Whitlam refused to be drawn in. His first statement in the Oval Office revealed his own early strategy for the talks—to shower the president and his country with compliments. ‘The United States is without doubt the greatest power in the world', Whitlam began, and he praised the Nixon doctrine for ‘generating a greater sense of self-reliance among the developing countries'. His host had made a ‘major contribution to world peace' in going to China and pursuing détente with the Soviets. Nixon was impressed with Whitlam's knowledge of American politics, a cue that enabled Whitlam to add,
in a line that sounded almost as if he was about to leap into lecture mode, that ‘perhaps the US could learn more about our system'. He had a point. Whitlam then proffered his support for Nixon's ‘general objectives', contending that ‘we cannot make issues between us a matter of contention in a way that jeopardises our relations'. Advising the president not to be discouraged by recent events—it was an implicit reference to Watergate—Whitlam reminded Nixon that his ‘strongest critics are in the US itself'. Then, again, recalling Nixon's address to the Australian parliament in 1953, he said he had known then ‘that a glittering future lay before you'. Whitlam was turning on the charm.

Nixon, though, was in the mood neither for glad-handing nor reminiscence. His concern was more with the world he was facing in 1973. Although it was ‘better because … the polarisation of the 1950s and 60s is behind us', there was still the possibility of crisis. Vigilance was key—his own way of suggesting that now was not the time for flirtation with new ideas of regional cooperation or zones of peace. ‘Suppose we were to face another crisis in Berlin or the Middle East, our intellectuals would demand that we stay out of these affairs and we would have a hard time exercising influence'. Thus ‘we really have to decide'—he said with considerable emphasis—‘whether we are going to opt out of the world'. For Nixon the answer was self-evident. He saw nothing less than a sea of troubles in world affairs over the coming decades: a potential reunion of China and the Soviet Union; an impatient, increasingly assertive Japan; and restive peoples in Africa and Latin America.

Nixon had revealed the extent of the remaining gulf between the two leaders, and he was only warming up. The president was especially concerned about Australia's commitment to Malaysia and the dangers of a strategic void in the region. As Nixon explained: ‘Neither of us may exactly approve of some of the governments in Asia where authoritarianism prevails, but these are forces with which we must deal, and we must do so in the closest cooperation—standing together against predators'. On the one hand, this was the very language that had sustained the alliance during the height of the Cold War; the very type of sentiment and approach Whitlam
wanted to leave behind: the perception of Asia as threat and the need to stand together regardless of possible divergent interests. On the other, it showed again the possibilities for convergence between the two leaders, Whitlam having long argued that neither ideology nor the character of regimes could be the sole determinant of a nation's foreign policy. But Nixon's more specific message was that a pull-out from Malaysia or other key regional countries could have ‘tragic consequences'. ‘If we get out of the world as some of our people and your people recommend, that may be fine in theory but in practice it could be totally otherwise'. The president was not in the mood to be holding back.

All Whitlam could do in response was to summarise some of the new policy prescriptions his government had brought in. But Nixon wasn't finished. Confessing that he ‘had never met an Aussie I didn't like', and that he foresaw a healthy future for the two allies, he isolated the differences in how each society wanted to defend its ‘heritage and interest':

 

We cannot get too far out in front of public opinion, and since the latter is beset with isolationist trends, we must fight against that tide, both of us. The main point is that we are at a critical turning point in history. After all the wars we have been through, we face the questions: do we have the will and economic power to cope with the challenges ahead? Can we afford to create a vacuum which others will fill? The view in Peking and Moscow is that their systems will prevail, not through nuclear war, but through other means … By pandering to public opinion we could leave the world. But why should we do so when it is within our power to maintain a sufficient presence along with our friends so that there can be a reciprocal reduction in armaments and the prospect of real peace? Our views of the world may differ but our goals are the same.

 

To this panegyric Whitlam could only give the assurance that Australia was not withdrawing from South-East Asia and that its air squadron would remain in Malaysia. And in an effort to appear responsive to Nixon's entreaty to a common effort, he affirmed that
‘it is widely understood that Australia's effectiveness in its relations with Asia depends upon a reputation for good relations with the US'.
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Yet this was not a theme that had been prominent in his public speeches. In the inner sanctum of US political power,'Whitlam appeared to be falling back into line.

During his other talks in Washington, Whitlam was at pains to stress there were no marks to be won in Australia for being ‘anti-American'. Indeed he told the secretary of state that Nixon's international policies ‘permitted the Labor party to win its elections'. Yet again, however, Rogers was not assuaged by these soothing words, and delivered a repeat dose of his warning to the Australian ambassador in January: if the Australian leader continued to denigrate SEATO, there would be an ‘eroding' and ‘snowballing' effect on other treaties. Although Whitlam again confessed that some of his criticisms of SEATO might have been overstated, Rogers retorted bluntly that Whitlam could not ‘have it both ways'—taking ‘pot shots' at SEATO in public ‘will encourage critics in the United States to take pot shots at other alliances, including ANZUS'.
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Whitlam was adamant, however, that Australia's ongoing membership of SEATO put it in a difficult position—it had formally recognised China and yet was still expected to participate in military exercises in the South China Sea in late October-early November 1973—coinciding with Whitlam's intended visit to Beijing. He remained firm that Australia would not participate—a move that the United States ultimately had to accept.
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